Nadi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI) President Lawrence Kumar said the National Budget 2025-2026 announced by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad is overall a “quite fair and inclusive one”.
He added the new fiscal budget outlines essential initiatives that have emerged from a comprehensive public dialogue process with various targeted groups.
Kumar says the new budget prioritises tackling socio-economic challenges while also maintaining macroeconomic stability.
Mr Kumar, a businessman who was elected as president of NCCI in a landslide majority vote on June 12 during a special general meeting (SGM) said he was glad with measures taken to support the average families in areas such as a reduction of value added tax (VAT) from 15% to 12.5% while maintaining the government needs to exercise prudent reductions to avoid revenue losses and have a balance on reductions on VAT to ensure government operations are not heavily affected due to lack of revenue collected if VAT is heavily reduced.
“Other sectors such as the Ministry of Public Works which has been provided with $800 million in the new financial year with the Fiji Road Authority taking $388 million, and the Water Authority of Fiji $284 million is one of the largest investments in infrastructure. Such investment is going to help the economy grow and create employment as well,” he said.
He said it is encouraging to see that other major sector such as health has been prioritised with an increase from $451.8 million to $611.6 million, with the continuation of a free medical scheme with a budget of $10 million that is dedicated to a free medical scheme with substantial increase from last year’s budget.
He said the bus fare reduction by ten percent is going to assist the general public in daily travel while having a social benefit increase of five percent from last year is surely a plus point as well.
“The housing assistance for first-time homebuyers with those first-time homebuyers between the brackets of $0 to $50,000 annual income getting $30,000 grant with the first-time land purchase, getting a $20,000 for a first-time buying as well such initiative would surely promote home ownership,” Mr Kumar added.
He said the announcement of an 8.75 percent interest payment to FNPF members remains quite positive and will boost confidence amongst members.
“It is quite a huge increase. Such a substantial payment of 8.75 percent has not been done in many years, so is one of those very key initiatives and key outcomes out of this budget to the FNPF members.
In terms of revenue, Mr Kumar said the projected revenue collection is projected at $3.9 billion, with an expected projected expenditure of $4.8 billion, a deficit of $886 million.
“The deficit is relatively high, but I understand where the government is coming from with the global crisis upon us and the ever-increasing cost of freight, the government needs to take such bold initiatives to assist the average income earner, and assist the citizens of Fiji,” Mr Kumar added.
He stressed that huge allocations to respective ministries come with huge responsibilities, so respective ministries and respective ministers need to ensure that the budgets are always managed and implemented with the highest level of accountability.
“The respective ministries have a huge duty on their hands. At the end of the day, respective ministries and government agencies should ensure that they are able to implement and monitor effectively their budget to ensure that the funds that are allocated are put to good use.
“There is a need to ensure that the services are delivered to the people, and there is no mismanagement of finances that are dedicated under respective government agencies.”
END…
